Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who created the famous ‘Konami Code,’ has died.

He was 79. Read the rest

In the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election and on Election Day, YouTube's homepage will reportedly be advertising only one candidate: Donald Trump. Read the rest

Ethos, the private equity firm owned by Republican billionaires that is trying to buy the rights to operate the internet’s .org domain range, said on Friday it will cap price hikes, and will agree to create an advisory board with veto powers to partly address some of the concerns of the nonprofit community. Read the rest

Facebook is reportedly considering making it just a wee bit clearer that pro-Bloomberg political campaign posts come from paid staffers on Michael Bloomberg's political campaign. Yes, 2020 is bonkers. Read the rest

Reporting at the WSJ today says Alphabet/Google hasn't met the demands of state investigators to surrender emails, texts, and other documents in an ongoing anticompetitive digital-ad practices investigation. Read the rest

• U.S. intelligence briefed House on Russia to ensure Trump's re-election. • Classified briefing to lawmakers made Trump angry • Trump said Democrats would “weaponize” news of Russian military campaign • Trump was mad DNI Joseph Maguire would let staff appear • That's why Maguire's out, Richard Grenell's in as 'acting' DNI.

In Washington last week, U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers that Russia is carrying out a military-grade attack on the 2020 elections, with the goal of making Americans doubt the integrity of the vote and ensure re-election for impeached, manifestly unfit and corrupt President Donald Trump, Reuters reported Thursday. Read the rest

Sure, this absolutely passes the corruption smell test. Everything is fine. Trump and his klepto-regime are (of course) supporting Oracle's Larry Ellison in his Supreme Court fight with Google. The same day the same Larry Ellison hosted a massive fundraiser for Trump in California.

From reporting by Malathi Nayak at Bloomberg News:

The Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reject an appeal by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, boosting Oracle Corp.’s bid to collect more than $8 billion in royalties for Google’s use of copyrighted programming code in the Android operating system.

The administration weighed in on the high-stakes case on the same day that President Donald Trump attended a re-election campaign fundraiser in California hosted by Oracle’s co-founder, billionaire Larry Ellison.

Ellison hosted a golf outing and photos with Trump. The event cost a minimum of $100,000 per couple to attend, with a higher ticket price of $250,000 for those who wanted to participate in a policy roundtable with the president, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported.

read more:

Trump Backs Supporter Larry Ellison in Court Fight With Google [ Malathi Nayak, February 19, 2020] Read the rest

• U.S. State Department blames Russia for cyberattacks that hit neighboring Georgia in October 2019

• By identifying Russia's digital assaults on neighbors, US hopes to raise awareness of ongoing GRU attacks on US Read the rest

Above, a visit to a building in Liuyang, China where stacks of roman candle tubes and pop-its cover the floor. This is a fireworks machine trade show, where companies purchase contraptions for cranking out explosions of all kinds. Liuyang is commonly known as the fireworks capital of China. Here are some of the captivating machines that make (or break) July 4th and New Years Eve in the US.

(Props to Tasick Media on YouTube)

And as a bonus, here's a video of another machine that was used for manufacturing M-80s before they were outlawed in the US in 1966 (unless you have a license):

(Credit goes to displayfireworks1 on YouTube) Read the rest

The Defense Information Systems Agency, which calls itself a combat support agency of the Defense Department on its website, employs 8,000 military and civilian employees.

The DIA, which is responsible for secure White House communications, said Social Security numbers and other personal data its network held, was likely compromised, reports Reuters, citing a letter sent to compromised individuals. Read the rest

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened an investigation into a former Google employee’s pregnancy discrimination case, CNBC reports. Read the rest

Post-Brexit, Google plans to move UK user accounts out of the control of European Union privacy regulators, and will place them under U.S. jurisdiction instead, where privacy protections are weaker, reports Joseph Menn at Reuters. Read the rest

Personal information for more than 10 million former guests of MGM resorts has been posted on a hacking forum. Among the notable data breach victims: Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey. The leaked data includes home addresses, and is said to only affect guests who stayed at the hotel chain's properties before 2018. Read the rest

An estimated 550 people who worked at Wayfair lost their jobs last Thursday, in what has been dubbed Wayfair's 'Valentine's Day Massacre.'

The layoffs included 350 workers at the online shopping firm's Boston headquarters. Read the rest

“Russia has sent intelligence agents to Ireland to map the precise location of the fibre-optic, ocean-bed cables that connect Europe to America,” Ireland's security agency suspects, according to this report in The Times of London.

“This has raised concerns that Russian agents are checking the cables for weak points, with a view to tapping or even damaging them in the future.”

Irish security officials believe Russia may be targeting Ireland as a regional base for military intelligence operations because the country's counterintelligence abilities are limited, and Moscow presumably views Ireland as a vulnerable spot.

Additionally, various tech giants that have placed their offices in Dublin to evade U.S. taxes might be juicy targets for Vladimir Putin's corporate espionage programs.

Excerpt:

Ireland is the landing point for undersea cables which carry internet traffic between America, Britain and Europe. The cables enable millions of people to communicate and allow financial transactions to take place seamlessly.

Garda and military sources believe the agents were sent by the GRU, the military intelligence branch of the Russian armed forces which was blamed for the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer.

Read more: Russian agents plunge to new ocean depths in Ireland to crack transatlantic cables

[thetimes.co.uk] Read the rest

We've written here at Boing Boing before about Mike Bloomberg's awful memes, which the 2020 presidential hopeful's campaign machine crapped out on Facebook and Instagram this week with awful accounts like FuckJerry.

Facebook said Friday it will allow 'influencers' like FuckJerry to produce sponsored content for political campaigns, as long as the posts are clearly identified as ads, but sponsored political content will not be placed in Facebook’s political Ad Library, unless they're "boosted" by the influencer as a paid post, the company announced on Friday. Read the rest